FolioPhonic Favourites: Take Two

Illustration by Jasmine De Leon.

Our FolioPhonic team shares more of their favourites, from our podcast library to yours.

Sabrina

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This is a podcast about the Internet; the good parts, the bad parts and the ugly parts. Hosts Alex Goldman and PJ Vogt are the perfect pair to dive into the deep corners of the web with. Between talking about how to crowdsource a doctor’s diagnosis to finding ISIS extremists on Twitter to taking down fake lost and found sites; these guys do it all while making you laugh at the same time. Listen as they try to explain tweets to their boss or solve other people’s tech support problems.

Just like the title suggests, this podcast discusses problems associated with being a woman…so if you’re interested in the media’s current treatment of women, this podcast is a must. Hosted by Hazel Cills and Rachel Handler, this MTV News podcast is fierce and daring. The duo brings in their strong electric personalities to discuss topics like gender equality, employment, rape culture and more. Episode six is co-hosted by Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, founder of muslimgirl.com, and she smashes stereotypes about Muslim women in society. If you want to hear an honest and deep conversation about being a girl, give this podcast a listen.

When I heard that Jonathan Goldstein, host of the recently-terminated CBC Radio program WireTap, was doing a new podcast called Heavyweight, I was a little worried. WireTap was weird, witty and funny, and this just sounded… gloomy?

Fortunately, I needn’t be worried.

Whether you were a fan (or even aware!) of Goldstein’s previous show or not, Heavyweight is delightful, moving, deeply engaging and has quickly become one of my favourite podcasts. In each episode, Goldstein acts as a kind of time-travelling therapist/host, plumbing deep into a past regret or missed opportunity that still plagues his guest—or sometimes himself—and tackling it here in the present. Goldstein is an engaged and (at times inadvertently) hilarious host, and the situations and stories that come out of it are wild, wacky and often rather wonderful. And a bonus, for slow listeners like me, is that because the show is still pretty new (only five episodes to date), so it’s easy to get caught up quickly.